fotherbale wrote: "I have noted over the years that more often than not, proxy bids get beaten in the dying seconds, and the only way that I have been able to see to succeed with an earlier proxy bid is to leave a bid which is way more than the listing is worth,..."

Should be "more than the listing is worth _to fotherbale_" -  few items if any have a single absolute value.

The proxy system must work satisfactorily for enough bidders that it gets used. In the last 3+ years I've lost only 6 auctions mostly using proxy bidding.

(Of those 6 losses, 2 I was relieved to lose costwise, when I was a newbie. One I lost to a proxy bid, with £250 visible for a day or so, no one decided to beat it. My 6th loss was last week and unsurprising as I bid half-heartedly, as I bid £70+ for an item type that when new retails at about £40 but I'd won four auctions [by proxy bidding] on similar items the previous week and don't truly need to own more than that.)